red tide
by hyperphonic
Summary: She can feel him smile ruefully, and doesn't miss how his fingers tighten against her abdomen. royai/oneshot/mangaverse


**because: **these two fill me with so much joy i just can't

**disclaimer: **if i owned fma there would be a lot more sex

**for: **lyssala, because she feels me man. (and giselle because she puts up with my snapchats)

* * *

Ishval is a vast land, and untamed to the core. Amestris, for all its expansive geography has nothing else quite like it. Sandstone cliffs glow nearly blinding in the sun, and when the wind rages into a sandstorm he has known no greater fear. The young soldier thinks it rather like his blonde bedfellow; beautiful, yes. But undeniably wild, and woe unto you if you were to find yourself at it's mercy. The dusty air is usually blustery, and sand quickly becomes a most well acquainted friend _If only_, Roy bemoans, _I was this friendly with the higher ups!_ But he is not, and every moment not spent following orders or attending to his game of chess is spent picking sand out of the most eclectic of places.

Which is exactly what his favorite sniper finds him doing one too hot afternoon about three months into their deployment. Above, the sun beats so strongly that even their rigid protocol loosens, demanding rest and shade until the sun begins to fall.

And if that wasn't the perfect time to work on the sand currently chafing at his collarbone, Roy didn't know what was.

_Clearly though_, he thinks as he tries (and fails) to detangle himself from the twisted uniform, color rising as Hawkeye stares, _I should have hidden better_. "I hardly think behind your tent is the most secretive of spots," the blonde almost-smiles, one hand falling away from what must be a firearm hidden at her hip.

"Well," the defeated alchemist begins, chest still itching at the unfair burn of sand, "maybe I wasn't trying to hide from someone of your caliber."

The almost smile grows into something closer to an actual smile, "I am the _only _one of my caliber, Lieutenant Colonel."

Shifting his stare from the pseudo-straightjacket his uniform has become, the Alchemist grins boyishly. "Perhaps that was my point."

Her smile is as brilliant as the sun beating down upon their backs, and he catches himself as his own grin falls, dark eyes going wide as she begins to help him untangle. "_Honestly _Lieutenant Colonel."

Roy just barely refrains from asking her to help with the sand too.

* * *

Riza smells like cordite. Like the sharp bite of a bullet and wind so raw that it burns. When they are in Ishval, and the temperatures soar higher than his flames, Roy finds it fitting. She is a Valkyrie, a woman warrior who comes from forty thousand feet, death hot on her heels.

But she is his.

She is his when the night falls swift and soft, desert chill sending gooseflesh across her arms as they sit in his tent. Her back is bared to him and his lips are tentative as they press apologetic kisses to still-angry scars. "You smell like cordite," he mumbles into the soft skin hidden between shoulder blades. "Hardly surprising," her response comes softly, directed towards the wall as she sits on his mattress, bare save for his hands. "It comes with the territory."

She can feel him smile ruefully, and doesn't miss how his fingers tighten against her abdomen. "You shouldn't have to smell like cordite." But she does, and it wreaths in his nose even as his lips move again, tracing kisses across the familiar alchemic symbol. "But I do," she is already echoing his thoughts, and they've hardly been together since that night after the wake.

Uncanny.

But more importantly, the Flame Alchemist thinks, it makes his heart beat a little faster, and perhaps begins to loosen the perpetual knot between his shoulders. And that is more than anyone has done for him in a long time.

* * *

When the war is over (and Roy is comfortably packing the rank of Colonel on his starched blue shoulders) the dark man worries that he is going to lose his Hawk's eye again. All around them tents and supplies are being packed away, soldiers bustling around raucously. The air is hot, dry, and somehow lightened by the happy chatter of men and women about to go home. It is all too alarming; somewhere along the line he'd grown used to the oppressive heat and no promise of tomorrow. He'd come to relish in the rough and wait for the night when blonde hair would splay across his pillow and he could forget that they were on the frontlines.

Should their sense of wartime normalcy be shattered, would he lose the blonde he'd become so attached to?

Roy grimaces and begins to look for the familiar flash of gold.

When he finds her, his irrational fear grows so much so that he catches her wrist, gloved hands slipping against pale skin desperately as words come rushing like flames from his fingers and- "Be my First Lieutenant."

Riza's brows vanish into her bangs.

(He could have been more tactful.)

"Colonel," she begins, rough fingers tangling with his own in a rare, open show of affection. "I-"

" Please," his lips purse tightly as he steps closer, unable and unwilling to hide his distress. "Watch my back."

His heart soars when she sighs, "yes, sir."

* * *

Their illicit office romance turns out to be far more fun than even Roy had imagined. He was sure it had something to do with entering the vaulted hallways a calculated fifteen minutes after her, or perhaps the hot, lazy glances he'd feel trailing up his back during debriefs- but either way, both he and the First Lieutenant had an _excellent _mental map of available broom cupboards and storage rooms.

"Roy," she gasps, head tilted back against the shelving, "you have a meeting in _ten minutes!_"

Large, hot, hands curl around her hips before lifting up, his rumbled response almost lost against her throat and the rustle of their yielding uniforms, "that's more than enough time."

She's so far gone that she readily believes him. (Though his hands down her pants don't help any either.)

In the end, Roy saunters into his meeting almost ten minutes late; impeccable and charming and entirely distracted by the way Riza walks as if hiding a limp.

* * *

When they go to recruit the Elric boy, Riza thinks her heart might break. He is so young and so broken; she sighs and deftly unloads a 45' to clean. His eyes have no business looking like they've seen Ishval.

She knows that if her heart is panging, Roy's must be in shreds. (Beside her he sits and broods out the window, brow creased more so than usual.

Around them, the sky begins to darken prematurely, fog curling around the hills as they draw near Central Station.

Tomorrow it will rain.


End file.
